The archdiocese of Montreal should take the lead in the Roman Catholic church and start ordaining women, including married ones, as priests, a Dorval granmother and school chaplain said yesterday.

« I propose that our church (the Montreal archdiocese) become a beacon in the night », Margo Gravel-Provencher said in a brief presented yesterday to the synod of the Roman Catholic diocese.

Gravel-Provencher said she has felt called by God to become a priest for many years.

In addition, Gravel-Provencher, who has a master’s degree in theology, said God guided her research into the writings of French and Spanish mystics of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries that she thinks could help provide a theological rationale for ordaining women as priests.

In particular, she thinks Pope Jean Paul II’s admiration for the mystic St. John of the Cross and some of the pope’s comments on marriage and virginity point the way to reconciling the issue, notwithstanding the pope’s strong stand that the church is not authorized to ordain women.

In a 1989 document, the pontiff described marriage and virginity as two ways of expressing and experiencing the unique mystery of the alliance of God with his people, a communion of love between God and humanity.

Gravel-Provencher worships at the Dorval parish Presentation de la Sainte Vierge, where she was once on the staff. She works as a pastoral counselor at a secondary school in Vaudreuil, in the Valleyfield diocese.

Rev. Marcel Lefebvre, general-secretary of the synod, said Gravel-Provencher’s brief raised issues going beyond the competence of the synod and of Cardinal Jean-Claude Turcotte, Catholic archbishop of Montreal.

However, Gravel-Provencher said in an interview that she would like to see the Montreal diocese take the lead in ordaining women, though she thinks that is unlikely.

Joseph Giguère, co-chairman of the consultative commission and general manager of the Centre St. Pierre adult-education centre, said Gravel-Provencher’s endeavors are « sympathetic and respectable » an her intellectual an spiritual path has been an original one,

« You have all our encouragement to continue your endeavors stubbornly.»